Thursday, July 23, 2009

In recent days I have received three more contributions, all of which will be on Dictaphonia, Volume Four. This brings to 13 the total of contributions received that will be on Dictaphonia Volume 4, with about 10-12 more needed to fill up the compilation.

Larry Bruce, the proprietor and Chief Scientist at The Laboratory, has confirmed the date. The Laboratory is a new cafe located in midtown Gainesville that serves wine, beer, coffee, espresso drinks, and gourmet sandwiches, and snacks.

Performers must use microcassette in some way in their performance and it must be a prominent part of the sound. There will be a 9-minute time limit on performances and performers will only be allowed to use minimal gear, with a plug and play aesthetic and quick gear setups and breakdowns. Performers will play through a small mixer and two 10-watt guitar amplifiers provided by me.

I do not yet have a confirmed list of performers because it is four months away and things can change but these Dictaphonia project participants have expressed interest in performing:

Yesterday I worked on the master of Dictaphonia 3. After receiving these three tracks the third volume might be full, or I might have room for one more track. I will know in a few days when I add these three submissions to the master. This coming weekend I will create the artwork and start making tape copies. I also will publish mp3s of Dictaphonia 2 very soon. It is my plan to mail out the first contributor's copies of Dictaphonia 3on Monday, July 20.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

My friend Chris Miller and I went and had coffee at The Laboratory last evening. The Laboratory is a new cafe that just opened up here in Gainesville - they serve coffee, beer, wine, and gourmet sandwiches. We discussed numerous things with Larry Bruce, the proprietor. He calls himself "Chief Scientist" and wears a lab coat. When I pitched the idea of a microcassette-based show he seemed to like the idea!

I am going to propose Saturday, November 7th to him.

The idea in a nutshell, for now, is that I will invite only participants in the Dictaphonia project to come to Gainesville to perform at the show.

Performers must use microcassette in their performances and it must be a prominent part of the sound. The artists will be asked to perform short sets of under nine minutes.

Interesting, eh? I say interesting because I think it will be a real challenge to the the performers - in most cases the Dictaphonia artists used microcassette to RECORD what they were doing. This performance idea challenges them to use that machine as a performance instrument - to process sound with it, or whatever, however. Other than to stipulate that the performers "must use microcassette in their performances and it must be a prominent part of the sound" I won't give any further direction... other than to urge them to use minimal (and preferably lo tech) gear, with quick setup and breakdown times. It is my hope that the performers will do more than just play back a microcassette tape while they make other sounds, but at a bare minimum that would be acceptable.

I am also considering using only small guitar amplifiers, and I am CONSIDERING stipulating that everybody play through the same small amps that I will supply. Oh, and one more thing - this won't be billed as a Noise show - I prefer the term experimental music (or audio art). I am not sure yet, but I might bill it as a showcase of microcassette art.